The Linden of Lipany

Lipany is named after lindens, and by local tradition this is the last one left. The town turns up in fourteenth-century records as Septemthillis, the seven lindens, and the story told here is that six are gone and this one is still standing in the square. The same tradition holds that a contract signed beneath it in front of two witnesses once carried the force of a notarial deed. Neither claim arrives with documents attached. Both are worth knowing before you stand under it. What has actually been measured: over 320 years old, 536 centimetres round, 23 metres tall, growing in the pedestrianised square in front of the early Gothic Church of St Martin. In 2011 it won Strom roka, Slovakia's national tree of the year vote, and the town collected a prize of 333 euro for it. The same year it went on to the European Tree of the Year contest and came fourth, ahead of a good many trees from countries with far louder publicity. Most trees this old survived by standing where nobody needed the ground. This one has spent three centuries in the middle of a working town square, which is the harder trick. It is a short walk from Lipany station on the line from Košice through Prešov to Plaveč.